proper Against this, Hope is to be opposed and its acts as it relates to the virtue and exercise of pa tience are 1 Praying to God for help and remedy 2. Sending for the guides of souls: 3. Using all holy exercises and acts of grace proper to that state: which who so does hath not the impatience of despair every man that is patient hath hope in God in the 'day of his sorrows. 2. Our complaints in sickness must be without murmur. Murmur sins against God's providence and government: by it we grow rude, and, like the falling angels, displeased at God's supremacy; and nothing is more unreasonable: It talks against God, for whose glory all speech was inade; it is proud and fantastick, hath better opinions of a sinner than of the Divine justice, and would rather accuse God than himself. Against this is opposed that part of patience which resigns the man into the hands of God, saying with old Eli, It is the Lord, let him do what he will; and [Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven:] and so the admiring God's justice and wisdom does also dispose the sick person for receiving God's mercy, and secure him the ratlier in the grace of God. The proper acts of this part of patience: 1 To confess our sins and our own demerits. 2. It encreases and exercises humility. 3. It loves to sing praises to God, even from the lowest abyss of human misery. 3. Our complaints in sickness must be without peevishness. This sins against civility, and that neNo. 4. N cessary decency which must be used towards the ministers and assistants. By peevishness we increase our own sorrows, and are troublesome to them that stand there to ease ours. It hath in it harshness of nature and ungentleness, wilfulness and fantastick opinions, morosity, and incivility. . Against it are opposed obedience, tractability, easi ness of persuasion, aptness to take counsel. The acts of this part of patience are, 1. To obey our physicians: 2. To treat our person with respect to our present necessities*: 3. Not to be ungentle and uneasy to the ministers and nurses that attend us; but to take their diligent and kind offices as sweetly as we can, and to bear their indiscretions or unhandsome accidents contentedly and without disquietness within, or evil language or any words without: 4. Not to use unlawful means for our recovery. If we secure these particulars, we are not lightly to be judged of by noises and posture, by colours and images of things, by paleness, or tossing from side to side. For it were a hard thing that those persons who are loaden with the greatest of human calamities should be strictly tied to ceremonies and forms of things. He is patient that calls upon God, that hopes for health or heaven, that believes God is wise and Just in sending him afflictions, that confesses his sins, and accuses himself, and justifies God, that expects God will turn this into good, that is civil to his physicians and his servants, that converses with the * Vid. Chap. 4. Sect. 1. guides of souls, the ministers of religion, and in all things subunits to God's will, and would use no indirect means for his recovery, but had rather be sick and die, than enter at all into God's displeasure. Remedies against Impatience, by Way of Consideration. AS it happens concerning death, so it is in sickness which is death's hand-maid. It hath the fate to suffer calumny and reproach, and hath a name worse than its nature. 1. For there is no sickness so great but children endure it, and have natural strengths to bear them out quite through the calamity, what period soever nature hath allotted it. Indeed, they make no reflections upon their sufferings, and complain of sickness with an uneasy sigh or a natural groan, but consider not what the sorrows of sickness mean; and so bear it by a direct sufferance, and as a pillar bears the weight of a roof. But then, why cannot we bear it so too? For this which we call a reflection upon, or considering of our sickness, is nothing but a perfect instrument of trouble, and consequently a temptation to impatience *. It serves no end of ature; it may be avoided, and we may consider it only as an expression of God's anger, and an emissary or pro * Prætulerim delirus inérsque videri, པ། Duin . curator of repentance. But all other considering it, except where it serves the purpose of medicine and art, is nothing but, under the colour of reason, an unreasonable device to heighten the sickness and increase the torment. But then, as children want this act of reflex perception or reasonable sense, whereby their sickness becomes less pungent and dolorous; so also do they want the helps of reason, whereby they should be able to support it. For certain it is, reason was as well given us to harden our spirits, and stiffen them in passions and sad accidents, as to make us bending and apt for aetion: And if in men God hath heightened the faculties of apprehension, he hath increased the auxiliaries of reasonable strengths that God's rod and God's staff might go together, and the beam of God's countenance may as well refresh us with its light as scorch us with its heat. But poor children, that endure so much, have not inward supports and refreshments, to bear them through it; they never heard the sayings of old men, nor have been taught the principles of severe philosophy, nor are assisted with the results of a long experience, nor know they how to turn a sickness into virtue, and a fever into a reward; nor have they any sense of favours, the remembrance of which may alleviate their burthen: and yet nature hath in them teeth and nails enough to scratch, and fight against their sickness; and by such aids as God is pleased to give them, they wade through the storin, and murmur not. And besides this, yet, although infants have not such brisk perceptions upon the stock of reason, they have a more tender feeling upon the accounts of sense, and their flesh is as uneasy by their unnatural softness and weak shoulders, as ours by our too forward ap prehensions. Therefore bear up: either you or I, or some man wiser, and many a woman weaker than us both, or the very children, have endured worse evil than this that is upon thee now.ibl That sorrow is hugely tolerable, which gives its smart but by instants and smallest proportions of time. No man at once feels the sickness of a week, or of a whole day; but the smart of an instant and still every portion of a minute feels but its proper share, and the last groan ended all the sorrow of its peculiar burthen. And what minute can that be which can pretend to be intolerable? and the next minute is but the same as the last, and the pain flow like the drops of a river, or the little shreds of time: And if we do but take care of the present minute, it cannot seem a great charge of a great burthen'; but that care will secure our duty, if we still but secure the present minute. 3. If we consider how much men can suffer if they list, and how much they do suffer for great and little causes, and that no causes are greater than the proper causes of patience and sickness, (that is, necessity and religion,) we cannot, without huge shame to our nature, to our persons, and to our manners, complain of this tax and impost of nature. This experience added something to the old philosophy. When the Gladiators were exposed naked to each others short |